Try to imagine this sad planet saner
graced only by their kind,
not one thought idle enough
to betray garden and art, to shirk
play and freedom
in favor of greed. Though we can't count
ourselves among them, let us mourn
the concocting of gunpowder, the unearthing
of motorcars, the inventing of what's been dubbed
legal tender.
                    Despite those of us
dressed in tweed, plaid, khaki,
denim, poly, camo, try to imagine
the gentle holding fast in their nakedness,
though more defenseless than ever. Their spirit
prospers in the Pueblo
offspring of Anasazi, in children
of the shrinking rain forest, in sequoia
and redwood cambiums, in sphagnum
mosses, rock lichen, rollicking
acrobatics of baleen whales — even
perhaps in the paramecium — and most frail,
yet adamant, of all, in the platypus
and manatee.
                    What colossal will
persists in the koala, gripping eucalyptus
canopies high among galahs — in all
songbirds, raptors, the chimpanzee, the panda
rocking on its haunches,
the silverback gorilla. What great loss
we will someday come to feel
bowing to the picturebook wistful
glimpses of those allowed to go
extinct.
                    Looking through an upstairs window,
I delight in the whitetail
doe with twin fawns
nibbling timothy, seeming to tiptoe
deliberately into the heartland
of my reflection, into the gentle
drumbeat giving thanks.